Ever wondered what makes up the price of an airline ticket? It is not exactly rocket science though it becomes pretty difficult to understand the nuances of fluctuations. Airlines are one of the hottest services industry. So what causes these changes? We are about to explain. Continue reading The price of an airline ticket→

Every business has a sign over the top of the door that announces who they are to the world. The most basic reason for that sign is to allow a customer to locate them and know who they are. While that is all that may be needed for super-sized box store chains like Walmart or Target, most businesses do not enjoy that level of brand awareness that allows for a name to tell the whole story. For the rest of the retail and service industry world, the sign is needed to promote themselves, their products, and provide information to encourage the customers to come in. Continue reading Signage That Drives Business→

Given the technological advancements of the past decade – in particular the internet – customers now have a staggeringly vast choice in terms of the products and services they consume. Each year, countless new companies emerge on the scene, each trying to undercut the prices of those who’ve come before them. Undeniably, in a buyer’s market, perceived value for money is paramount. But what else marks the distinction between businesses that succeed and businesses that don’t? Without at doubt, customer service or “the buying experience” have a massive part to play as well. Here are some essential areas to focus on. Continue reading Going The Extra Mile: Customer Service Essentials→

In recent times, online shopping in India has really caught on the fancy of a large segment of the demographic population despite the digital divide. Indeed, the convenience factor, lowered prices and accessibility to resources has driven this habit, more than anything else in India. Baggout has conducted a survey recently and the results are shared in this Infographic. Continue reading Online Shopping in India – Market Research Report→

The 7 Ps of services marketing is indeed a popular framework used by marketing professionals to design the critical dimensions of the strategic blueprint while marketing a service. The services marketing mix is dominated by the 7 Ps of marketing namely Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process and Physical evidence. In fact, the 7 P framework is one of the most popular framework for deciding a marketing strategy for services in domains like banking, information technology enabled services or hospitality and tourism, right from strategy formulation to actual implementation.

However, one needs to be aware of the limitations of this framework while applying it in a business context. So in this article, we will discuss some of the major limitations of this services marketing framework.

One of the major drawbacks of the 7 P framework is that it does not address issues related to productivity in terms of both quantity and quality of service delivery. In integral services management, improving productivity during service is a requisite in overall cost management; but quality, as defined by the customer, is essential for a service to differentiate itself from other providers. These two deliverables are essentially opposite to each other in terms of goals. A firm would want to pursue a strategy involving cost minimization but still quality maximization. Hence a strategy that manages trade-off between such conflicting goals is needed to be optimized.

Similarly, another major important issue is managing the core competencies embedded within a firm. Services are essentially intangible in nature, by its very definition. Processes like service delivery address only a small part of the larger cake. Drawing from the resource based view, the organizational competencies are not matched through this framework, which is one of the building pillars of developing strategic frameworks which are external in nature. The viewing of internal resources in silos is somewhat a barrier for this framework, if used to develop an actionable strategy.

Another limitation of this framework is that it does not provide a mapping between the pricing strategies that needs to be followed, vis-a-vis the productivized version of the service. That mapping is often one of the most important drivers that can create or break the adoption of a service. A mapping of pricing to the critical dimensions (features) of the productivized service draws its theories from the pricing of services, which are often done in silos, since dimensions cannot be identified which are in unision but not over-lapping to the main delivery. Over-lapping dimensions create a perception of fluctuating utility among the consumers, and since these are intangible, the overall valuation of the importance and value of a service, gets impacted in a major way.

Understanding the limitations of any theoretical framework before applying it to practical scenarios is crucial for the success of the strategic plan. Please let us know, what you feel about this article. By the way, did you read about the 8 Ps of marketing, the new age marketing mix?

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